Backup and Restore

iTunes Backup

Even if you never use the backup and restore features of Easy Books, your data is being backed up by iTunes each time you sync the phone (or iPod Touch).

You can connect the phone to iTunes, right-click and choose to backup from there. iTunes keeps one backup copy, so you won't be able to go back to an earlier set of your books, but if you change your phone you can restore your data to it.

Backup

The launch of the iPad has changed the way we backup data in Easy Books. We wanted to allow users to backup their data and email it to themselves rather than upload to an online system because that way, everyone keeps control of their personal data. But restoring the data back to the iPhone currently means copying the text representation of the data and pasting it into Easy Books's restore screen. All this is about to change with the new iPhone 4.0, and with the iPad. These both allow you to tap on an attachment and send it into an app that handles that type of file. We like this, and it makes restoring an old backup very easy; just tap on the attachment in mail on the iPad, and it asks if you want to open it with Easy Books. Couldn't be simpler!

The only way to restore on an iPhone running OS 3.1 is to paste the database as described in the Restore process below. But you can backup in the new format for restore onto an iPad. Once the new OS has been released for the iPhone, we will phase out support for the text based backup in favour of the direct file method.

To create a new backup, find the app settings screen and tap Backup.

The iPhone shows the two options for backup:
* Export for copy + paste
* Export for direct file import

If you plan on restoring to an iPad or to an iPhone running OS 4.0, please use the "direct file" method.

Export for copy + paste

Easy Books creates a text representation of your data. The backup data for all businesses is contained in the one backup file. This does not include the passcode as a safety feature; the passcode is linked to the individual app rather than the data.

To send the backup by email, tap the "Export to Email" button. The file is attached to a new email message as an HTML file. (The internal format is a SQLITE3 database, g-zipped and base64 encoded).

Users of email services such as Mobile Me, GMail or Yahoo! mail typically use IMAP to access mail. This allows the email to remain on the server, which means it is available to read again from your new phone, or another phone. If you are using POP to retrieve your email, you may want to retrieve the email from a computer and store a copy of the attached backup file.

Export for direct file import

The direct file method exports the database as an attachment with the file extension "easybooks_backup". When Easy Books is available on an iPad or iPhone, the mail app can pass this file easily to the app to restore the data. Therefore, using this method, there is no need to manually restore the database from Easy Books; just tapping on the file attachment is enough to bring up Easy Books, which will ask you whether you want to start the restore process.

This backup method is faster than the text based method, and as the app is updated with more features, this method may be the only one capable of handling the larger databases. We plan on adding the ability to take photos of your receipts and attaching them to the expense lines, which will increase the database size and this will not be available using the copy + paste backup method.

Restore

You only need to restore using this method if you have a backup file in the text format (copy + paste method). For users using the new direct file backup method, simply view the email in Mail, then tap on the attachment named "Easy Books Backup.easybooks_backup". Mail will ask you whether you want to open the attachment in Easy Books. If you do, the file is passed to Easy Books, and the restore process can start.

To restore the text based backup, find the email message containing the HTML attachment. You can view the attachment on the phone. Tap and hold down on the message. You can choose "Select All", followed by "Copy". This places the attached backup file in the phone's memory, and this is pasted into the Restore area of Easy Books.

To go ahead with the restore, tap "Import". The data is checked to make sure it is valid, and if it is, you will see a message from the phone confirming that you want to import the database. This is important because you will overwrite the current database with the one contained in the backup. If you think you might want to return to the current one, you can easily perform a backup just before the restore.